Supporters' comments

A selection of comments from the petition. Supporters on what this campaign means to them and the need to reform religion and belief education.

"Schools are in the business of education, not indoctrination. If RE us to be taught in schools, it should be taught in an unbiased academic way."

James from Bushy

"Schools are for education not indoctrination. Schools should help people understand each other, not drive them apart or discriminate against some children on the basis of religion. No discrimination and no proselytizing would be a good manifesto pledge."

A supporter from Carlisle

"RE should be descriptive and not normative. That is, our children should be educated in the belief structures and ethical approaches of the major religions, without being taught that any one of them is actually true. The teaching should include humanism. To allow local organisations, or even schools, to dictate religious teaching will literally foster parochialism. It will invite religious segregation and ignorance of other religious and non-religious people."

John from Crosthwaite

"Partisan religion has no role in education. If it must be taught it should be in a manner that indicates the variety and plurality of belief and non-belief."

A supporter from Leicester

"No school - especially those receiving funding from the state - should be permitted to teach about religion from their own exclusive viewpoint and the law should reflect this."

Martin from London

Rod from Sevenoaks

"My child has been taught Christian doctrine as fact in RE. He was 5 years old and at a community school. It is especially important that RE subject leaders and teachers, often interested in the subject because of their own faith, understand - very clearly - that it is not an opportunity to invite others to share their faith."

Joe from Ringwood

"I've already excused my children from GCSE RE because the RE teachers at my kids' school consistently set work presupposing a belief in God and invite Evangelical locals to the school to teach literal interpretations of the Bible. This has to stop."

A supporter from Burscough

"I'm a lead RE teacher and a member of a SACRE. I can see that provision for the subject varies widely nationally and that faith groups have vested interests in forms of RE that are not broad and balanced. The ability for parents to withdraw their children is detrimental to the subject, but necessary while faith groups can be allowed to teach a biased curriculum."

A supporter from Bristol

"Because allowing local groups to determine the syllabus is unworkable. Most lack the knowledge and pedagogic skills (except the teachers) to be able to make any sensible recommendations. Most SACREs are heavily resistant to any form of secular or non-religious input."

John from Watford

Take action

Please consider supporting our petition or writing to your MP, tell them it's time to take decisions about religion and belief education away from local religious groups, and for real 21st Century RE for all.

New guidance on managing parents' right to withdraw their children from religious education in Wales is largely common sense, says Alastair Lichten. But it downplays the confessional nature of some RE...

Teachers from the ATL union have voted to demand a clampdown on parents selectively withdrawing their children from RE. But Stephen Evans says the right to withdraw should only be scrapped once the subject...

The latest report into the problems with religious education reiterates the need to start with a fundamental examination of the subject's purpose. But, Alastair Lichten wonders, do the proposals go far...

A parent's legal challenge to the exclusion of a humanist representative from the local body responsible for overseeing religious education highlights the need for urgent reform of this contested area...